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Why are lithium prices collapsing?

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Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#311

Post by giantg2 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #292
giantg2 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That's FUD, my dude." Only if you explain it the way you just did. The fact is, instead of restricting water usage related to lithium mining, they'd rather let the river run dry. While the drough is a major factor, so too is how the regulations allow the continued abuse of the limited resource.

If lithium mining brings in money to buy water and other things as well, then it's not great, but it's probably the better choice.

True, but are they actually offsetting the negarive costs by doing things like that, or are the companies protecting their profits?

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#312

Post by tsimionescu »

signatoremo wrote: post #97
tsimionescu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course prices are based on speculation about possible supply and demand, nobody has a crystal ball that can tell them “actual” supply and demand. Exactly, no one has such a crystal ball. And this actually generally applies not just to future supply and demand, but even to the past: it's actually impossible to measure supply and demand across any significant industry, to check whether prices matched it or not. An…

> you may well lose the bet if everyone else believes the pundit Can you give a real life example of when a pundit giving a predict against the actual supply that had everyone buy-in? Says, oil price goes down even when demand is hot?

The price of oil is a particularly bad example, since it is heavily controlled everywhere in the world, as is supply. The international price of oil is largely set by OPEC or the USA or a few other countries (depending on geographical region).

Also, this type of pundit influence is common with the price of stocks. It also happened with the price of natural gas in Europe last year, when it increased based on lack of confidence in reserves that turned out to be misplaced, and never really recovered.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#314

Post by vel0city »

FpUser wrote: post #188
wolfram74 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be interpreted as saying unless you fix everything at once, any incremental change should be seen as disingenuous and merely a distraction. Would you like to rephrase?

When fixing one gives you 0.01% and fixing the other - 99.99% you go for a second one to achieve any sizeable gains. Doing it the other way is only good for fooling people to gain some points in one's political career. And you do not even have to fix second one completely to see positive results so it is not fixing everything at once.

What's the one thing that will solve 99.99% of climate change issues?

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#315

Post by kortilla »

wolfram74 wrote: post #135
ericmay wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet some of it also like, ok you’re banning gas stoves that I like cooking on but everybody owning a Ford F-850 and private jets are still cool (from an environmental perspective)? Seems like a spending a few bucks to save a few pennys kind of scenario. The health argument is fair but seems like it shouldn’t be a mandatory requirement so much as a safety warning (based on my current understanding). The fact that we…

This could be interpreted as saying unless you fix everything at once, any incremental change should be seen as disingenuous and merely a distraction. Would you like to rephrase?

Increments so small they set the expected completion time to 1000 years from now are worthless.

There is only so much time people have to create, debate, modify, and enforce policies. Every time you waste our collective time to change on something so irrelevant, you starve out real topics.

Incremental change is fine, but the increments need to be large enough to actually put us on the needed “increments per year” path to get somewhere.

Something like 6 years ago California banned water being given out by restaurants by default. It did nothing to move the needle on the drought and had people debating water usage in people’s day to day lives for months. It was the tiniest increment and California was only saved by a massive winter precipitation event this winter.

We won’t have a massive winter to stop climate change. Stop fucking around with incremental shit and tax all hydrocarbons heavily.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#316

Post by vel0city »

oceanplexian wrote: post #287
comte7092 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They put out less BTUs (9k vs 15k-25k from a high end gas burner) How much of that makes it into the pan, and how much is waste heat?

The reason gas is superior is due to heat recovery time. Recovery time is the time it takes to reach temperature after adding food to a pan. Gas is superior to all forms of electric in recovery time. There simply is /more energy/ in a cubic foot of gas compared to what a home electric circuit can deliver in the same time frame. It’s science, plain and simple. The practical effect is food spends less time steaming, so…

A gas stove might be able to create more BTUs/min but if half of that heat misses the pan because it's rapidly rising and being vented out of the kitchen it's not really helping me much.

Meanwhile most of the energy from my electric stove actually makes it into my pan instead of out a vent or into my kitchen.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#317

Post by blurbleblurble »

elif wrote: post #109

Because I see so much "conflict metals" discussion when lithium is discussed, I would like to contribute that less than 3% of global lithium production takes place on small artisanal mines, in which place human rights abuse may occur. Over 85% of lithium is produced by just 2 international corporations with large scale mines complying with multiple international regulation requirements.

Lithium could be considered a conflict metal on a larger scale though, in that it has likely been a large factor in geopolitical decision making over the last decades: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/24/as-us-exits-afghani...

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#318

Post by kortilla »

danaris wrote: post #93
nprateem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> speculation and gambling Of course. The net present value of a stock or asset can only be calculated based on its expected future price and earnings. Since there's no way to know this with 100% certainty, stock prices are inherently speculative. Even value investors must struggle to accurately value a company's intangible assets.

But there's a material difference between "attempting, in good faith, to determine what the demand for a commodity will be in the future, and buying based on that" and "attempting to determine what the price of a commodity on the futures market will be and buying based on that". When people say that a commodity's price is being driven by speculation and gambling, they mean that it has shifted from the former to the l…

People who say that don’t understand what’s going on. Those futures eventually resolve to delivery so this is the real price that producers are selling and and consumers of commodity buy at.

All of the speculation is entirely based on how the news might impact the physical product.

Oil prices went negative precisely because storage was full and people didn’t want the obligation to take delivery of the oil when nobody was using it.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#319

Post by specialist »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #202
botanical wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A legacy of the Pinochet era in Chile is the privatisation of minerals and water, which gives companies ownership of those resources in an area. While mining operations squeeze this already dry region even drier, communities lose their access to potable water, leaving them relying on tankers to deliver it. “We used to have a river before that now doesn’t exist. There isn’t a drop of water,” says Rivera. “And not on…

As a former citizen of the USSR, I have to object to linking environmental issues to private property. The Soviets did all kinds of tremendously bad things ranking, from geo-transformation to placing the heavy industry in the middle of cities. From what I read about North Korea, the entire country is ruined by various extraction and industrial projects.

Yes and:

One view is private vs public capitalism. USSR vs USA, respectively. Extreme wealth concentration at the expense of everyone else.

Both are anti-democratic.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#320

Post by comte7092 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #288
comte7092 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chile has a GDP per capita not all that different from peer South American countries of Argentina and Uruguay [0]. It is a stretch to characterize “winning” membership to the OECD as some sort of objective, non ideological measure of economic progress. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

GDP per capita is a very narrow indicator that does not come close to telling enough about the economic condition of a country. Argentina seems to be going bankrupt and drown in enormous inflation every couple of years. That isn't the case with Chile. Based on this factor alone, Chile and Argentina aren't peers. I don't know enough about Uruguay to judge.

Those were simply easy examples, there are plenty of non oecd countries that have higher levels of wealth than Chile.

> GDP per capita is a very narrow indicator that does not come close to telling enough about the economic condition of a country.

In what was us GDP per capita deficient, and what criteria would you propose exactly?

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